Also on tap this week is "Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie."
In this image released by Columbia Pictures, Rachel McAdams, left, and Channing Tatum are shown in a scene from "The Vow." Washington Post
The following films are available on home video this week:
“The Vow” – Not only do stars Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams know their way around tearful breakups and torrential reunions, but the plot also follows the familiar path of true love against all odds. Tatum plays Leo, who runs a recording studio and is married to sculptor Paige (McAdams). The perfectly matched free spirits take late-night dips in Lake Michigan, have tickle fights to relieve stress and host a pop-up wedding at the Art Institute of Chicago. But after a car accident sends Paige through a windshield, she wakes up a different person and reverts back to her former, humorless self. Thus begins the tug of war. Paige’s parents urge her to return home to their Lake Forest mansion; Leo begs her to stay in the city, in their record-filled one-bedroom. The movie has more promise than its trailers suggest. Tatum and McAdams have chemistry and, although Leo and Paige’s pre-accident relationship is overly schmoopy, they create a winning couple. Extras: Commentary by director Michael Sucsy, deleted scenes, gag reel. Blu-ray adds three featurettes.
“Underworld: Awakening” – Selene (played by Kate Beckinsale, her mop of jet-black hair dropped over one luminescent-blue eye) was nabbed in the middle of her last escape and thrown on ice. She awakens from cryogenic sleep to see that 12 years have passed and her werewolf/vampire lover Michael is gone - swept up in the purges humans carried out to rid the world of bloodsuckers. But there is a child that the surviving werewolves (Lycans) want to get their hands on, of which the few remaining covens of vampires are leery. The new villain is a scientist (Stephen Rea) who has been keeping Selene on ice and the child he calls “Subject 2” under wraps. And the new take on all this, by Swedish directors Bjorn Stein and Mans Marlind, is to show the bites, slashes and arterial spurts in extreme close-up. And in 3-D. It’s a humorless movie of chases and epic brawls, of beasties, bites, blades and blood. No time for empathy or character development or clever dialogue. Extras: Filmmaker commentary. Blu-ray adds blooper reel; “Heavy Prey” music video by Lacey Sturm featuring Geno Lenardo; five behind-the-scenes featurettes: “Selene Rises,” “Casting the Future of Underworld,” “Resuming the Action,” “Building a Better Lycan” and “Awakening a Franchise, Building a Brutal New World”; 3D version also available.
“Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” – This moderately funny feature based on the cult cable-TV sketch comedy show “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” didn’t cost much to make. At times, the movie has the look and feel of the cheaply made late-night commercials that it mercilessly, and occasionally hilariously, mocks. Writer-director-producer-stars Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim don’t really do “jokes” so much as they specialize in a brand of post-modern comedy that wrings laughter out of moments of awkwardness and ineptitude. Heidecker and Wareheim, playing fictionalized versions of themselves as first-time filmmakers, are screening their new movie for its mobster-producer. But the end result is a self-indulgent, three-minute flop called “Diamond Jim.” With a contract out on their lives, Heidecker and Wareheim go on the lam, taking a job managing a run-down mall. Twink Caplan, a 64-year-old actress, plays Wareheim’s love interest, Katie, who runs a balloon kiosk at the mall. It’s hard to know whether the nearly 30-year age difference between Caplan and Wareheim - and the bluntly vulgar way he articulates his fantasies about her - is meant to induce laughs or squirming. It doesn’t matter. For Heidecker and Wareheim, a groan is as good as a guffaw. DVD extras: commentary from and interview with Heidecker and Wareheim, deleted and extended scenes and making-of featurettes.
Also: “Tom & Jerry: Around the World,” “Girl Fight,” “Chuck: The Complete Fifth and Final Season,” “Kawa” (New Zealand), “La haine” (1995, Criterion Collection), “The Big C: The Complete Second Season,” “Playback,” “Cold War: The Complete Series” (CNN), “Shock Labyrinth 3D” and “The Twilight Zone: More Fan Favorites.”